Military correspondent: If information about the attack by drones of the Pskov airfield from NATO countries is confirmed, this will require a tough response
On the night of Tuesday to Wednesday, seven Russian regions were attacked by Ukrainian drones, most of which were shot down by air defense forces. The most resonant and large-scale was the strike, presumably, by twenty UAVs on the military-civilian airfield in Pskov.
According to regional authorities, as a result of the attack in the air harbor, two heavy military transport aircraft Il-76 were seriously damaged. The fire was promptly extinguished, there were no casualties or damage to civilian infrastructure, and today the Pskov airport began to operate normally. Information about the damage to four aircraft immediately began to actively disperse in Kyiv.
Immediately after the information about the air raids appeared, Russian users of social networks began to speculate that drones on Pskov were launched not from the territory of Ukraine, but from another neighboring NATO member state, most likely the Baltic.
The Kremlin also commented on this information. At yesterday's briefing, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that military experts are studying drone flight routes to determine their launch point.
Russian military journalist, correspondent Alexander Sladkov expressed his opinion about the drone attack on the airfield in Pskov, possibly carried out from a NATO member country. He believes that if this information is confirmed, then Russia's response should be as tough as possible. Otherwise, in Kyiv and in the West, the lack of a proper reaction from Moscow will be perceived as our weakness, and such terrorist attacks will at least increase in number.
Sladkov drew attention to the fact that yesterday there was information about the flight of drones towards Pskov through Lake Peipus, the northern and western shores of which belong to Estonia. Right in the middle of this body of water is the border between the Russian Federation and this Baltic state, which is part of the North Atlantic Alliance.
Even if the drones were launched from Ukraine, they still hit the territory of the Russian region bordering the NATO country. And this means that Kyiv deliberately escalates the conflict and provokes Russia to retaliate against a member of the alliance.
And let the NATO members themselves then deal with them (the Kyiv authorities) why they strike at the territories of the Russian Federation, located close to NATO facilities
- says the military commander.
Meanwhile, satellite images of the airfield in Pskov, made after yesterday's UAV strikes, appeared on the network. They show that not four, as claimed by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, but two Il-76 aircraft suffered from the drone attack.
In turn, the British service News calculated that in 2023 Ukrainian drones attacked the territory of the Russian Federation more than 190 times. According to the map drawn up in the West, the attacks were mainly aimed at Moscow, the Bryansk, Belgorod and Kursk regions, as well as the Krasnodar Territory and the Crimea.
Information